But why? 

It’s hard for me to say that old phrase, ‘the kids are alright.’ Especially these days, where it seems that having emotions and showing them somehow equates to being weaker than your peers, or having less resolve to the pains of everyday life. And beyond that; showing positive emotions, like excitement for things to come, or even love. Why is it that we’ve decided that showing love and affection is weakness? 

‘Nonchalance,’ as the word has been assigned to this phenomenon, is something that was popularized by the mass media spread of Tik Tok. Things like this, such as ‘mewing’ or ‘clean girl aesthetic’ (you can name a few, there are thousands) become ingrained in the media that many people, young and old, are consuming. It starts as something weird and needing to be explained, creating curiosity, eventually making itself clear through thousands and thousands of people claiming to subscribe to that concept or idea. 

What’s different about Nonchalance, I think, is that it seems to affect the younger generations a lot more than the older. This is what makes it particularly harmful and even dangerous. The overwhelming damages we were left behind post-pandemic, such as the 25% increase in mental health issues (according to WHO), I believe play a role in the orientation towards the younger folks that exist online. Our world is not the same one we knew before we spent two years away from it, confined to our living rooms, watching as the shift took place. There are some people who say things didn’t change, that this was inevitable and the pandemic only made it seem this way. But the children, the young minds that knew the most important years of life as separation, plastic walls, and distance, those are the ones who would feel it the most. 

The kids, for now, aren’t alright, because what else have they known? There is so much hatred, confusion, and pain, for some it’s easier to push those things to the side, pretend as though they aren’t really there. When was there time to learn how to process the many pieces of everyday life? We were so busy doing everything we could to get the masks off the children, we forgot about the minds that hid behind them. Now, they are scrambling through the brambles of growing older with their only guides being terms that have drifted far from their original meanings, trends that push them further into the patterns of quick dopamine rushes, and coping mechanisms that do more harm than good. On top of all that, the constant horrors that are constantly taking place in our world on a global scale can become overwhelming, and many kids never learned how to regulate those fears and worries. 

I won’t claim a bias case for my own sensitivity. I have always been the kind of person who feels things very deeply — my own emotions, and the emotions of others as well. As a child I always had to be the first of my siblings to get my shots at a doctor appointment, because if I heard their cries from the needles I would be in tears almost instantly. They’d stab my tan skin and send me out to the waiting room. I have always been, and still am, the kind of person to bear all the weight of hurts, pains, loves, joys. I can’t imagine being any other way. Sure, there are times when being this way can feel almost burdensome, worn down by extremities and sorrows that can become consuming in every corner of my life. But, without those feelings, especially those good ones that come with the light parts of being human, I would not have the people in my life that I love so dearly, or the experiences that have made the person I have the opportunity to be. And even if this applies a bias to my argument, it would be unfair to say that there aren’t other people who are just the same, who feel as I feel. 

Who are we as people without feelings and emotions? Every part of being alive is about how we react to the things we see or the things that happen to us. I’ve seen people wanting to blame the kids for wanting to be ‘nonchalant,’ pinning them as soulless or lost. But how would kids know any better when they’ve barely been shown as such? To love, hurt, cry, scream, and laugh is all human, all vital to being. The slow joys of an evening spent with friends, or the prolonged blues of losing something or someone — both are two small parts of a larger whole, one that could never be replaced by nonchalance or dopamine hits that come and go seconds at a time. That is the vital difference between then and now.

So then, the question is: how do we recover from this? What will it take for the pendulum to swing back? 

It has to start small. In the ways that we not only treat the ones who are already pushing it all down, locking away the feelings and shutting off — but all the people around us. There is always time to spend loving, learning, showing, crying, laughing, and there shouldn’t be any shame in those things, no matter how daunting the world around us may be.

The post Vulnerability in the Time of Indifference appeared first on The New Absurdist.

I start this not to suggest that there is anything I feel against this motif. I, too, am a lover of Wendy Cope’s The Orange, or Gary Soto’s Oranges, or even Roisin Kelly’s poem by the same name. My favorite rendition of this is JP Infante’s Yasica, Puerto Plata. 

“When I saw my great-grandmother peel a tangerine with her bare hands while men used knives for oranges, she became god.  I imagined what she could do with the sun.” (excerpt from Yasica, Puerto Plata) 

There is an endearment to writings like these, I think, that a lot of people find. That idea of someone taking you, the orange, in two gentle hands, tearing your skin to find what is truly you, pulpy and tender and hidden away. But why? Where does this come from? Why detach from our human selves and find understanding in citrus? 

Among the many opinionated literary folks of the world, there are some people who are completely exhausted by this idea, even calling it a cliché. Some string it alongside the common writings on pomegranate, a fruit that had come to have symbolism for feminism and love but has since become a sort of indicator for ‘bad,’ ‘performative’ TikTok poetry. The same has begun to happen with figs, after Sylvia Plath’s fig tree concept. 

But I am not here to discuss pomegranates or figs. Rather, I see oranges tumbling down into the same rabbit hole of dilution. 

For one, even as oranges find their way into language and writing time and time again, they can also be found in metaphor and phrases, like in Spanish. The phrase ‘mi media naranja’ or ‘my orange half’ refers to the idea that every person has another half that they are constantly in search of, suggesting a kind of destiny or generational connection that goes far beyond what we see in this one life we see presently. This is often linked back to the Greek myth recorded by Plato in The Symposium, where the idea that every soul is missing its other half is also expressed, claiming that Zeus caused this divide out of the arrogance of humans.

With this origin, I found a sort of poetry alone in the fact that oranges and many citrus fruits are the only fruits to be naturally subdivided, while usually for these orange metaphors the focus is primarily on the peel. You split one open — with a knife, maybe, like JP Infante’s poem — and half the work has been done for you, politely waiting with the segments in their expected places. 

I believe part of our exhaustion with oranges can be found in this. We give them surface level meaning, as surface level as the 3mm vivid, aromatic peel. The irony in this is that part of the symbolism we are always creating with oranges is about seeing things beyond their simplicity, like the orange peel theory; the idea that how or if someone peels an orange for you can indicate affection or care. 

Dare I say this theory has watered down the juice. To stop at the peel is to lose so much of the magic that can be found here! Dig a little deeper into the bright sun of it and find, perhaps, Amy Schmidt’s Abundance, in memory of Mary Oliver. 

“It’s impossible to be lonely 

when you’re zesting an orange. 

Scrape the soft rind once 

and the whole room 

fills with fruit. 

Look around: you have 

more than enough. 

Always have. 

You just didn’t notice 

until now.” 

This poem follows Mary Oliver’s Oranges, which I think also seeks further into the idea. 

“Cut one, the lace of acid 

rushes out, spills over your hands. 

You lick them, manners don’t come into it. 

Orange−the first word you have heard that day−”

(excerpt from Oranges) 

I think what often happens with poetry as it circulates online is a gradual misunderstanding of meanings. This present day loves to take a concept and spin it into one specific thing, keep it contained in a box that doesn’t allow further critical thinking or creativity (like orange peel theory!). We consume things quickly, in small rushes of dopamine that fade as quickly as they come. The same has happened to oranges.

When do the mundane things become beautiful, and vice versa? How does the repetitive nature of our modern day prevent us from being able to enjoy these poetic motifs? Sometimes things must be taken deeper than they are, looked at from a new angle, given new life. What I mean to say is sometimes you can’t garner the meaning from the simplest of explanations or viewpoints. Take a dip into another set of eyes, find the angle. 

To be able to absorb these ideas with a grain of salt — seeing past the misuse and confusion caused by modern day media — is to be able to peel past the skin, find the segments, see what more there is to something mundane.

The post In Defense of Wendy Cope, Gary Soto, Roisin Kelly, etc. appeared first on The New Absurdist.

If you’re unfamiliar, Letterboxd is a social networking platform that allows people to rate, review, and catalog films. It pretty much functions exactly like Goodreads with a laughably bad search function to match.

When I was a more avid reader growing up, there was nothing more satisfying than slamming my latest book shut and immediately typing away on my Goodreads account to publish the most unfiltered, long-winded review.

A friend or two—someone I knew in real life or Tumblr—would like my update, prompting feelings of immense pride and accomplishment to rush in. I was doing a great service. I was a critic offering well-regarded opinions. People trusted my taste in storytelling, an honor and responsibility I did not take lightly.

When Goodreads rolled out its recommendation feature, I was emboldened to continue pushing my favorite books at the top of my friends’ feeds like an absolute menace.

Now I slip my one-sentence, tongue-in-cheek, anonymous Letterboxd reviews in quick, smooth, easy conversations in person or via text. My comments are just as unsolicited, but the validation I get from making myself chuckle alone is enough of a reason for me to keep doing it.

—

I watched Jane Schoenbrun’s A24-distributed film I Saw the TV Glow (2024) and finished New York Times bestseller The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (2020) in tandem. 

On the surface, both stories are pretty different. If they were the same medium, they wouldn’t be in the same genre section in Barnes & Noble or Netflix. Their intended audiences seem far apart as we follow a 35-year-old British woman in present day in The Midnight Library and two queer pubescents in American suburbia in the late 90s to early 2000’s in I Saw the TV Glow. 

Still, I came away from each story equal parts comforted and disturbed by the shared antagonistic passage of time, the mess of people and remnants of wasted potential lost or left behind, the fatigue of existence and repression in a stagnant world, and the life-saving, persisting art that emerges as a constant opposition for stragglers to build identities, homes, and whole communities around.

In The Midnight Library, Nora’s lifeline is the musings of old male philosophers and in I Saw the TV Glow, Owen and Maddy bond over a campy young adult show called The Pink Opaque.

Despite their respective outlets, we witness the nightmares of Nora and Owen actualize in real time: a dead-end, unfulfilled life haunted by what-ifs.

Nora’s what-ifs are a wide range of unrelated choices and passions. Owen dismisses and runs from gender dysphoria, or as it manifests in the film: the possibility that they are an unconscious Isabel, one of the two main characters in The Pink Opaque.

Nora lives out variations of her life through the purgatorial Midnight Library, each book a gateway to an alternate life she could have led. The Pink Opaque starts to bleed into Owen’s reality, but the harder they push this world away, the faster time skips ahead, leaving them with no memories of the past few years-turned-decades as they become more shell than human.

—

The metaphors these stories employ to make their points can be heavy-handed and blinding. (Though personally I enjoyed watching I Saw the TV Glow more than I did reading The Midnight Library.)

I’m aware this is a common crisis among 20-somethings and that other stories have dealt with disassociating from a life passing you by.

When I reminisce and look back on my life (as it’s beginning, thank you), my brain naturally visualizes my Goodreads account, specifically the annual reading challenges and year-end summaries in books. 

I can pick out a book and recall not only the year I read it in, but also the state of mind and circumstances I was in while reading.

If I go through my old rambling Goodreads reviews, skimming through the noticeable lack of punctuation and capitalization in some, and the ecstatic overuse in others, I can focus on the personal tidbits younger me threw in between the lines…as breadcrumbs, almost, leading to…I have no idea where exactly.

I can view my degression as an avid reader laid bare on screen. In 2015 and 2016, I read 53 books each year. In 2022 and 2023, I read a whopping total of 9 and 8.

Eleven months into 2024, I read 4 books including The Midnight Library and two of which being a manga volume and poetry collection. On the flip side, I logged 40 films in my Letterboxd diary.

One way or another, I’m getting my necessary fix of stories. As someone who has had difficulty being in touch with recognizing and feeling what’s real, media in its many forms has shaped and been shaped by how I’ve made sense of my life in that moment in time.

With an amorphous blob of a personality throughout my teenage years, using my favorite books, shows, movies, and music as an escape and front was always an intentional choice to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths.

Over time, I absorbed the stories so that they became a part of me, so that I was unrecognizable without them.

There are two aphorisms both The Midnight Library and I Saw the TV Glow really hinge upon. Without them, there is no purpose to either story. 

Matt Haig writes “three simple words containing the power and potential of a multiverse.” 

I AM ALIVE.

Jane Schoenbrun lingers on a shot of a street covered in chalk doodles and squiggles, framing a clear message.

there is still time

I want the stories I consume to be an extension of who I am, rather than define and form my entire being. 

I’m working on talking more about the experiences I’ve lived and not only the ones I’ve lived vicariously through fictional characters.

In separate discussions about I Saw the TV Glow and The Midnight Library, two friends asked if I had any regrets.

I said I didn’t, I’m too young, but I also don’t know that I’ve made decisions big enough to live out their effects. Or perhaps therein lies the regret: the absence of risk.

The voice that narrates in my head sighs and tells me to keep going.

The post I Walked Through the Midnight Library and Saw the TV Glow appeared first on The New Absurdist.

They were studying in a “lifestyle” school, more precisely a coaching center that teaches English. The students, as per the site, enroll to master the English Language. But it is not the language that they are becoming proficient in, it is in fact an image that they are mastering. Like fair skin, Indians, especially North Indians obsess over the English language. English coaching is as common and affordable as the Glow and Lovely “brightening creams” available in every corner store.

I often feel I might be placed relatively low in the hierarchical state of society, but I cannot ignore the fact that I had the privilege of attending a private English medium school. Since I was four I was taught to speak in a certain way. I knew the difference between “can I come in?” and “may I come in?”. I knew how to roll my r’s or pronounce aitch and not ech. This invisible privilege plays a part in my presentation of self. Over the years, constantly conversing in English has given me a certain level of confidence. I know when to pause, I know how to behave and I know how to be polite. I was taught the invisible rules of this society – the same rules that might be taught in a lifestyle school.

This superiority of English is injected into us from the day we are born. As we start to learn to talk, parents bring home the graphic books decorated with colorful pictures of a bright red apple to learn our A’s, a speckled yellow banana to learn the alphabet B, a curly tailed and fat bellied cat to learn the letter C and so on. But who would want their kids to fall behind? This is the lingua franca, the “window to the world”.

English is used for official purposes such as legislation, judiciary, and communications between the Central Government and the State Government in India and within corporations. Thus the official atmosphere in meetings in corporations and sometimes otherwise is filled with English. Proficiency in English continues to be the sine qua non to better employment in big business firms and even government concerns. Language mediates who gets to speak and where, and who is listened to. Many universities worldwide increasingly favored English in teaching and research, creating a severe disadvantage to non-native speakers.

As soon as I entered 11th grade, like many Indian children, I was on the path of becoming an Engineer. I was enrolled in a high-end coaching center which fed lakhs of students the dream of cracking JEE exams (a competitive entrance exam held for Indian Institute of Technology ). I had just lost my father and as a consequence, my family was suffering through a serious financial crisis. My mother, seeing it as my only chance to crack this exam, borrowed fifty thousand rupees to pay for the coaching fees.

These classes took place in a room as big as an auditorium. It was filled with hundreds of kids my age and older. The voices of teens talking to each other echoed inside the building. A petite girl shifted to make space for me as I took a seat beside her. Two tattered notebooks laid in front of her, notes written in both of them. One was an English notebook with some words with incorrect spellings and another was a notebook filled with paragraphs written in Hindi. I asked her why the two notebooks.

She replied, “I went to a Hindi Medium school so it gets difficult for me to catch up. I need two notebooks: one in which I write what I understand and another in which I write the words I don’t understand. This way, I know which words to study better.” Looking over her face, I realized that I was never going to be as serious as her and lost motivation — she was ready to work twice as hard as me.

English entered our lands for all the wrong reasons. It was forced upon us. Outsiders tricked us and many of us still bear that oppression that was seeded by the Britishers. In India, British policy entailed a willingness to create a class that mirrored the colonizers’ frame of mind. This involved the opening of schools and universities based on British models, which embraced the hegemony of British language and culture. As Indians, the middle-class especially, started to realize that learning English would help them acquire a government job and make their future secure, gradually more people demanded to be educated in English. This resulted in the increase of private secondary schools to cater to these uprising demands in learning English and over time English became the symbol of elitism.

During a documentary shoot I was involved in, our crew had reached a remote village in Uttar Pradesh. While the camera team was setting the frame, a couple of the crew members were chatting up on the sidelines. A scrawny tall man hovered around the camera crew examining the equipment. He was the brother of the person we were about to interview. After surveying, he walked over to us and said, “The camera is quite impressive.” A couple of us looked surprised. One of my crew members carried the conversation while I moved on. At lunch break, the team member said, “That guy speaks amazing English. I did not expect him to speak so fluently.” In truth, we all weren’t expecting that a person belonging to a rural area would speak English so fluently. Our prejudiced mind was surprised.

This perception of elitism played a role in schools as well, creating a lot of shame and anxiety over non-academic matters. Although our crisp white uniforms brought forth a sense of equality between the students, possessions like bags, watches, tiffins, packed meals, and shoes revealed the drastic class differences between us all. The only non-material thing that separated us was language, and that was difficult not to notice. During our English classes we were asked to read the passages from our literature books, teachers selecting children at random or move in rows. Students would prepare beforehand, calculating which paragraph they would end up having to read. Accents and dialects helped us to judge who was part of the elite. If someone mispronounced something, they would not only be embarrassed but also demeaned. Children didn’t do it on purpose, but this inherent need to distinguish “the other” was definitely projected (the teachers attitude never helped either).

As I was growing up it became clear to me that the parents of others that were more educated than my parents spoke better English. By no means were my parents less intelligent, but not being able to speak in fluent English made me uncomfortable and ashamed (a short-coming on my end). I even started to distance myself from “Bhojpuri” the language that my father conversed in with his peers and even in the house. Whenever he used to open up the Mahua channel, where shows of Bhojpuri origin played, I would invariably shudder. It took years to unlearn, and get rid of the shame that I once carried. The shame did not originate from their inability to speak English rather it rooted from the image I constructed of my family.

I once fell upon a huge pile of Bhojpuri books covered with a sheet of dust in an ill kept state. The spines were tattered and the pages were yellow and torn, but I found myself opening up the first book of the pile and turning to a random page. The words felt familiar – I could read them but could not fully grasp the meaning. I photographed the prose to send to my mother, who had grown out of speaking Bhojpuri. During our phone call in the evening I asked her to read some lines from the Bhojpuri book. I heard a familiar tone that I hadn’t heard for the last thirteen years.

Bhojpuri over the years had grown to have attached a rather different image from its origin. Popular songs that generally objectify women or propose endless double meaning statements gradually decreased the gravitas of the language. A language which is older than Hindi. Its folk songs hold the tradition of northern India. This bastardisation of the language made me distance myself from it. I was affected too much by its image. But images change.

Those songs have become a melody that reminds me of a time that was filled with innocence and sometimes cluelessness. A time when I could sit next to my father and watch shows that I never fully comprehended. I remember my father’s voiceless laugh with his big belly bouncing up and down. Sometimes I think the reason why I gradually forgot his voice – because I never really spoke his language.

The post In India, English Is Not Just A Language appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Since the village was near an army base, we needed permission from the local officials to shoot aerial shots of the village and the chain of mountains. Our line producer had managed to get all the permits. I think that as a form of courtesy (mixed with the intrigue that the camera often evokes in people), the officer decided to meet the director.

The army man was tall with an impeccable posture. I don’t remember much about his features, but I did notice that throughout the conversation, his arms were either crossed or gently placed near his hips with his legs wide apart. 

My boss and two other members of my crew greeted the officer with utmost formality. After pleasantries, my boss like every other time went on to explain the purpose of our visit: to make a documentary series on organic farming practices in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Any more detail might just cost me my job. 

After a couple of nods and mandatory laughs, the officer presented a proposition to them. I was just across the road near our car with a bunch of my colleagues waiting rather patiently for the conversation to end. After a long day of work, everybody wanted to either lie down or have a long steaming bath. I wanted both. 

“Why don’t you guys visit Badrinath? It’s only about 40 kms away. It’s a once in a lifetime experience,” said the officer with a huge grin on his face, probably proud of the suggestion, “I can pull some strings and get your crew an entry to the temple hassle-free.”

For the readers who do not know about Badrinath: It is a place of great significance for Hindus all over the world. A place of worship which is only open for four months for the pilgrims. Hindus come in great numbers to visit the temple. It is a once in a lifetime experience. But this experience could lead to a greater issue. This plan would mess with the airtight schedule that I had planned with meticulous detailing. 

Since the proposition was in fact a good one, my boss had decided that we would be visiting Badrinath. Almost all the crew members grew excited since it mostly comprised practicing Hindus. 

“Bhagwan ka bulawa aaya hain. God is calling out to us.” 

I, on the other hand, went into a sort of panic – my palms suddenly felt sweaty, my breath quickened and different scenarios started running through my mind. I began re-planning the [week’s] schedule in my head, trying to find the best way to account for this unexpected departure from the plan. 

“Okay so… if we decide to go to Badrinath, then we would have to postpone the recce and then the shoot, which means I have to stay an extra day. Or what if we skip the recce and start with the shoot the day after… then we would be able to complete the shoot within the schedule but the one time we did do that, it was a disaster.” 

The laughs of the suddenly energized crew who were crying and complaining a few seconds ago, agitated me even more. 

The conversation had finally ended and we all sat in our respective cars. My boss sat next to the driver’s seat while I sat just behind his seat. As soon as we boarded the cars, I leaned forward and started babbling, “Sir this is not a good idea. This is a disaster. And why do we need to travel to another place and waste a day? This doesn’t make sense sir. I did not plan this.”

With a calm and heavy voice, he said, “We’ll see what we’ll do. Calm down. I know what’s at stake,” and soon fell asleep. I leaned back and put on my headphones, still thinking about the decision he would take. 

That day, while having our tea in a small shop with old wooden benches and the sweet smell of milk, I realized I may have overreacted to my anxious thoughts. 

“I am sorry sir. It wasn’t my place to say these things. I am really sorry.” I said with remorse. 

With a smile on his round face, he gently tapped my head. We continued to cautiously sip our hot tea, a relief in the cold. It was a little too sweet for my taste but that is the speciality of the hills. 

“You need to let it go. You don’t have to do everything.” This phrase kept ringing in my ears. Something my boss had suggested to me a few times.

To let it go. First of all, I still don’t know what it entirely means. Secondly, the last time that I felt like I had let go, I was lying on the bed day in and out, binging on shows and had become numb to my surroundings. No exercise, irregular food habits and no hope had pushed me into a deep black hole of weight gain and subsequent PCOS or it could be vice-a-versa. It is safe to say that I had no clear ambitions. 

Somehow during Pandemic when all of us faced a collective crisis of existentialism, I decided to convert my longtime hobby into my profession. 

I still remember the first time I attended an online workshop for non-fiction writing. They had asked the participants to add our bios on a Google Docs page that everyone shared. Every time I would type “writer” near my name, my mind would reject it. I did not earn the title yet. How can I be a writer if I haven’t published anything? After much back and forth, writing and then deleting, I chose to write “wannabe writer”. 

As Clarice Lispector wrote, “Writing is just one of the ways of failing”. Something that I was way too familiar with, so I never did put my hopes up.

Gradually, I started sharing this news with family and friends. I was again faced with the familiar expression of pity but somehow for the first time in the longest time encountered hope. 

The closest ones came to my aid. A friend of mine made a short film with me and another one introduced me to my boss. 

During the first couple of months of my job, I was in constant fear. What if they realize that I am a living hoax, a talentless, good-for-nothing pretender? I did not have room for failure. Soon, this job became my everything. 

I spent countless nights researching, reading and writing. After a stomach infection, a UTI, a great number of fevers, sciatica, more than 20 outings, 300 interviews, a bunch of drafts, 2 panic attacks, and numerous 12+ hour shifts later we were ready with the scripts. I even added one more responsibility to my plate and became the Assistant Director of the project because who better to look out for the project than me? 

Letting go meant letting go of control, of not constantly thinking about the next step. To let go meant being complacent with the choices I made and being at risk of ending up on the familiar path of indecision and failure. 

After I came back from this trip, I realized that I never really enjoyed my trips. I always equated them to work. Always stayed a little too focused and on my toes trying to anticipate all the possible problems we could face. I had to bring out the best in me because who wants to see the worst in me? I had forgotten to enjoy the little things. I would chart out the schedules that were planned every second of the shoot. But during my shoots, I started to face the irrevocable nature of change. Every time when we went for a shoot, religiously something new would come up. Sometimes the characters were too shy to speak on the camera, or a rainstorm would delay plans, the research we did was not adequate enough or simply that the characters had changed their practicing styles. On a whim we had to find solutions and sometimes even new storylines. 

To see my scripts and stories crumble apart made my head hurt. The imposter syndrome would suddenly make a comeback. Surprisingly though, whenever we’d let go of expectations, we’d find that the shoot transformed into something new. Sure, it wouldn’t always turn out better, but it would never turn out worse. 

The constant need for change during production challenged me and, in fact, prompted me to give up control. Sharing rooms, sleeping on unfamiliar beds, eating new food, ending up in new locations, meeting familiar and unfamiliar faces, canceled shoots, and whatnot loosened my grip. 

I always felt because of a failed initial career, I was lagging behind my peers- losing a race, so to speak. I felt as if I had no other option than to make a sprint for it.

Recently we were back for a shoot in the hills of Uttarakhand, at a place called Supi. Even though we were covered in padded jackets, somehow the cold managed to penetrate through the thick jackets and into the skin. There was constant cluttering of teeth and the sound of hands rubbing together. The strong winds froze my nose. Unexpectedly, silver specks of snow started falling from the heavy clouds floating above us. Tiny dots started appearing on our black or brown hairs. The frowns on our tired faces slowly converted into smiles. The phones started popping out of everyone’s pockets. Momentarily every one of us had forgotten about the bone-chilling cold. I tried to make some videos of me catching some snowflakes on my hands but failed miserably. A not-so-loud “cut” came out of our director’s mouth. 

The host of the place came running towards us. With a huge grin on her flushed face she exclaimed, “You guys are so lucky. It usually never snows after January.” 

It was a once in a lifetime experience and I wasn’t going to miss it. While documenting the lives of others I had forgotten to document mine. Even worse, I forgot to live my life. 

The snowfall lasted for about an hour. I experienced it all. My phone was filled with hundreds of photos and videos of myself, my colleagues, the mountains, the fluffy dogs, the snow, and possibly everything that would make this memory last forever. 

As the snowfall reached its end, I took a deep breath; a smell loaded with pine and musk that filled me with delight.

The post Learning To Let Go appeared first on The New Absurdist.

In the following review, Rowan M. offers her experience as a girl with a Jewish background who took the initiative to personally learn about what is going on in Palestine. A special thank you to this contributor for her research, and collaborating with the New Absurdist to share her thoughts on these Palestinian films and documentaries.

Rowan M:

While watching these films, I felt both enraged and helpless seeing the way people of Gaza and Palestine were being treated. Each of these films gave me a new perspective and allowed me to learn more about a history that our own educational system has failed to teach us. Much of the content made my stomach turn with sadness, some of the more graphic moments making me cry because of how frustrated I felt. All I could think was, “If I feel like this just WATCHING these events, I can only imagine what it’s like for those facing it first hand”. Films like these remind me how much I still have left to learn about the world.

These films do not have “happy endings”, but rather honest depictions of real life. Each one of these films reminded me how important it is for us, as human beings, to have enough empathy to learn about and help those who are facing such intense oppression. And while I don’t have much to my own name, I will continue to do what I can in order to support Palestine and call for a ceasefire to the ongoing genocide we are witnessing. As the saying goes, “You don’t need to be Palestinian or Muslim to support this fight, you just need to be human”, and we need a lot more humanity now than ever before.

The five films Rowan watched are:

1. Farha
2. Born in Gaza
3. Omar
4. The Present
5. Habibi

Film Synopsis and Review: (Spoiler Alerts!) 

1. Farha: Based on a true story, this film focuses on a young Palestinian girl during the year 1948, who dreams of expanding her education and pursuing schooling in the city rather than get married. However, just as her father is finally allowing her to follow these dreams, it all comes crashing down. Their village is suddenly attacked, bombs flooding the area. Rather than running to escape with her friend, Farha stays behind to try and help her father. She ends up being locked away in a pantry in order to remain safe. Her father promises to come back for her, leaving her trapped for days, running out of food, water, and hope. We also see glimpses of how the IDF soldiers treated her community. In one graphic scene a family attempting to hide is killed, and their newborn son left to lay on the ground due to the IDF soldier not having the heart to crush the baby (since they didn’t wish to “waste a bullet”). The film ends with Farha finally escaping the pantry, seeing both the dead child, and the now abandoned area she once called home. As she leaves, she can only wonder where her father is, though she never saw him again after these events. She lived on to tell her story.
   


2. Born in Gaza: This documentary focuses on the violence of the Israel-Palestine conflict and its effects on the children of Gaza. It follows the story of about ten children who describe what their daily life is like after the horror of the war during the summer of 2014. It details memories they have about specific attacks and bombings, and reflects the trauma they face in regards to it all, including how they are unable to receive much help or mental support.
   


3. Omar: This film explores the lives of three close friends and what it is like for them as freedom fighters living under the control of the Israeli military. After another incident facing violent mistreatment, the three carry out a dangerous mission to attack the IDF in order to support the resistance, killing one of the soldiers in the process. Omar is eventually arrested and faces brutal torture by the IDF. He ends up agreeing to be an informant for them to avoid remaining in jail,  (and also for the sake of his sweetheart). However, he hides his true motives and remains loyal to his alliances, leading to an intense and in depth look at the conflict between Palestine and Israel.
   


4. The Present: A short film about a father and daughter in the Palestinian enclaves of the Israeli-occupied West Bank trying to buy a wedding anniversary gift for the mom of the family. This story explores the difficult life Palestinians face within the West Bank, showing that what would be the most simplest things for some is not for them. It includes the absurd challenges they face as well, trying to navigate a system that is built against them as they do their best to survive.


5. Habibi: This film depicts a modern retelling of a forbidden love story between 7th-century poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah and his one and only Layla, who meet each other while studying at school. It shows a glimpse into stereotypical roles within their home lives, and the expectations they face as they try to navigate an already deadly world around them. We see how they are mistreated by others, and what happens when they try to run away and together, being harmed by IDF soldiers in the process.

All five films are available to stream on Netflix (US) 

Further watch list (and credit for cover image): Palestine Film Institute

Decolonize Palestine: Reading List

Literary Hub: 40 Books to Understand Palestine

This Is Not A Watermelon by The New Absurdist

The post 5 Palestinian Films to Watch appeared first on The New Absurdist.

September is the start of New York Fashion Week, making it a prime time for brands like Dove to launch their new advertisement campaigns. With these subway ads, a quippy hashtag, and the help of Dove pop-up stands – or “pit stops”— giving away free merch and MTA cards, it makes sense that the ad campaign has gotten lots of praise online in the last few days in the press.

If Dove’s ad campaign was the final drop in the bucket of confidence you needed to bare your armpits with pride, that’s great! But it’s important to understand that Dove cares more about your wallet than your pits. Dove is not aspiring to create a social movement that makes women feel confident unless they are spearheading the ‘movement’ with their own merchandise. 

The first red flag is that for a campaign that claims to be about not judging armpits, especially unshaved ones, there’s not a single bushy armpit in the bunch. At most, there’s a slight hint of stubble.

Ad images of Dove’s #Freethepit campaign sourced from Ogilvy

It’s no coincidence that Dove has chosen NYC and Times Square to debut #freethepits when this is a central location to #freethenipple protests. And with women’s freedom to go topless, or even braless still being a controversial social issue, it feels as if Dove has chosen to appropriate one women’s liberation movement in the name of creating their own social media campaign.

Dove’s #freethepit campaign is just the latest, local example in what is called Commodity Feminism, also known as “Femvertising” and “Empowertising.” 

Commodity Feminism

Commodity Feminism refers to the way companies will align themselves to feminist ideas and imagery, all because it will help them sell more products. Similar to how companies use Greenwashing to create a false public image of being eco-friendly, companies use feminist buzzwords to sell products to women, such as alway’s #likeagirl campaign.

If you’re not thinking too hard about it, these campaigns may seem full of liberal or progressive ideas, but keep in mind these are giant multi-billion dollar companies. These movements come out of allegiance to their investors, not grassroots activism. Logically, it only benefits companies to keep women, their main clientele, happy and buying. If dissing women would have made these companies money instead, you can bet they would have.

The way these commercials work is to associate women’s power in society with their buying power. Since women have money, they have power, and with this money they can buy things to pamper themselves. 

These ‘pamper products’ tend to be geared towards unpleasant ‘luxuries’ like shaving, waxing, disguising odors, and dieting- all things to make a woman more conventionally sexually attractive, if not to men, then at least themselves. This in turn increases a woman’s self confidence. Femvertising creates the illusion of an equal society, where the more money women spend, the more power they have. 

Often, this ‘type’ of ‘feminism’ is targeted at middle to upper class, heterosexual white women and neglects the experiences of BIPOC, trans, and disabled women. But where there’s money to be made, the ‘inclusion’ will eventually follow, if femvertising is not an example in itself!

A deodorant by any other name would smell just as sweet. Whether you call it Commodity Feminism, Femvertising, or Empoweritsing, the fact remains that the visual and written language of this advertising still is meant to obscure how Dove is still marketing off the insecurities of women.

How Feminist is Dove, Really?

In the same survey that Dove sources to use as slogans and quotes for its advertising campaign, “80% of women believe society promotes an ‘ideal’ underarm; most say the ‘ideal’ underarm should be hairless, smooth, odorless, and even-toned.” (Dove Underarm Confidence Survey).

You don’t see the mention of anything other than hair in Dove’s slogans because… well, to encourage women to not judge armpits based on odor would be a bit counterintuitive to the interests of a deodorant company.

This isn’t the first time Dove and OgiIvy’s partnership has encountered controversy for their ads. In fact, the debut of the “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty ” in 1994 is considered to be one of the first ‘Femvertising’ Campaigns.  As part of the “ Dove Campaign for Real Beauty,” there is no digital retouching in any ads, and all photographs are approved by women. And yet, in their casting calls, Dove has continually searched for women with “no tattoos, perfect skin,[and] bodies that aren’t too curved or too athletic.”

In this new #freethepits campaign, we see that the ‘no tattoos’ rule has been lifted, but the models chosen still fit within a restrictive standard of beauty (light, clear, unwrinkled skin and uncontroversial body types.)

And for an ad campaign based in New York City, there are no South or East Asian women featured in the photographs, with South Asian/ Brown girls being one of the primary demographics in America historically especially to be ostrasized for having body hair. The ad campaign also didn’t consider representing anybody older or visually disabled.

Compared to the other full upper body shots of the ad campaign, there is one close up of an ethnically ambiguous woman that perhaps is meant to serve as an all encompassing diversity figure for any body that wasn’t otherwise represented. 

Femvertising aside, when we dig a little deeper and recognize that Dove is the baby of its much larger parent company, Unilever, Dove’s integrity regarding its pro-women campaign seems compromised Unilever has come under fire for human rights issues in its supply chain, including slavery and forced child labor in palm oil and cocoa plantations.

I’m all for freeing the pits, but I think Dove should work on liberating people – or not enslaving them– before it “liberates” women’s armpits.

If you’re interested in learning more about Commodity Feminism, I recommend “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of A Sensibility” by Rosalind Gill, where I sourced much of the information about commodity feminism in this article. I also sourced information from “The Rise of Femvertising: Authentically Reaching Female Consumers” by Elisa Becker-Herby.

The post Something Stinks with Dove’s New #freethepits Campaign appeared first on The New Absurdist.

In the animated Netflix original Kipo, the titular character, Kipo is biracial Black and Korean. The two supporting human characters, Wolf and Benson are Black. Benson openly announces he is gay and Kipo and Wolf are debated amongst fans to be queer-coded. The rest of human society is filled with multiracial characters and peaceful racial coexistence is the norm, at least among humans. 

As a biracial Asian American growing up, it was rare for me to see this level of racial representation in film or animated children’s media. Nowadays, it’s apparent that representation of all kinds is becoming more important especially with younger audiences seeking out more content that reflects their demographic.

Kipo Fandom Wiki: Kipo And the Age of Wonderbeasts poster

To speak a little about the plot: 

Kipo has been living in the Burrow her whole life in an underground, suburban coded utopia (and quite literally sub-urban, as she lives below a city) for humans where they can protect themselves from the surface world, where mutated animals known as “mutes” dominate. When she is accidentally separated from her family in a mega-monkey mute attack, Kipo goes on a mission to get back home, meeting friends and making allies along the way. Kipo’s world is set 200 years in a post-apocalyptic future, and the range of race and sexuality are easily accepted, addressed, and normalized. The main issue of discrimination and specifically racial tension focuses on the animosity between humans and mutes. 

Racial Redesigns

Kipo and the Age of WondersBeasts was first created in 2015 by Radford Sechrist as a webcomic. It was eventually turned into an animated series by Dreamworks and Netflix, and all three seasons were released in rapid succession in 2020. 

While the TV series starts off fairly similar to the original webcomic in plot and character roles, many racial aspects of the main characters were changed. Benson was changed from a middle aged white man into a young Black teen. Wolf is redesigned from a racially ambiguous, potentially Asian character to match voice actress Syndney Mikayla ‘s Black American ethnicity. And while Kipo looks the same as she does in the webcomic, she was not originally created to be the bispecies, biracial (Blasian) character that she is in the show (Kipo was originally intended to be Korean, but her character was not redesigned to reflect changes in the show). 

Images from Kipo Fandom Wiki, From Left to Right: Benson, Wolf, Kipo

Radford Sechrist has offered up some reasons through interviews and comments on Reddit, one of them being that the producers wanted the characters all to be kids and for Kipo to be “special” somehow.

What does it mean to be special? The transformation of Kipo’s character from a mono-racial, human character to a biracial, bi-species character has done two things. Her biraciality on her human side can be read as a symbol for her dual species. Furthermore, the purple skin offers viewers a foreshadowing indication of her mute DNA. It can also be read as a way the show codes Kipo’s Blackness and status as POC.

In the history of animated film, there has been a pattern of portraying POC, particularly Black people as animals or in colors that deviate from skin tone to indicate a non-humanness to them. Tiana, the Black main character in The Princess and the Frog spends most of the movie as a green frog. Similarly, the Black main character, Lance Sterling, in Spies in Disguise turns into a pigeon.  In Soul, Joe Gardener is immediately turned into an amorphous blue blob and literally disembodied. At one point in the film, a white woman’s soul even inhabits his Black body – animating a black man’s body through the desires and thoughts of a white woman.

People of Color have historically been depicted in animation as non-human characters that appear to exist outside racial constructs. By portraying POC as whimsical colored or as creatures, the animation industry can attempt to circumvent accusations of racism while still appealing to white audiences with the humiliation and exploitation of non-white characters. These character designs of POC skirt realistic depictions and stories as a way to appeal to that demographic that historically only mattered (with their buying power): white audiences.

Despite Kipo’s mostly successful attempts to provide representation that doesn’t rely on negative stereotypes surrounding race, it does still end up using established racial tropes in animation that viewers are already familiar with in their visual vocabulary. 

Multiracial Asians in Film and Animation

The show actively plays on Kipo’s racial ambiguity to build up the postmodern, suburban utopia that Kipo grows up in: “The Burrow.” The show introduces Kipo’s father as her primary caretaker, making it immediately clear that despite Kipo’s appearances, she is indeed Black. And because Kipo’s mother’s Korean ethnicity and Part-Mute nature are not revealed until later on in the series, Kipo’s character design and story arc become heavily tied into her own racial ambiguity. Both Kipo and the audience learn more about her heritage the further we watch the series. 

In addition to Kipo, the Burrow has quite a few racially ambiguous and multi-racial characters in the background and ensemble cast including Troy Sandoval, who is also a multiracial person, this time of Asian and Latino descent. Troy too, joins Kipo on her mission of resolving tensions between the mutes and humans and ends up befriending a giant frog named Jamack.

Kipo Fandom Wiki: Troy Sandoval

The coding of ‘white’ and ‘black’ can change between the mute world and the human world.  In season 2, “The Ballad of Brunchington Beach” a mute restaurant refuses to serve humans, mirroring twentieth century American racial segregation. In the same episode, the TheaOtters put on a show stereotyping and dramatizing Team Kipo and other humans, which seems to allude to minstrel shows in which white people would put on blackface to entertain white audiences. It’s interesting to note that as these acts of racism take place against humans on the mute dominated surface world, the three main human characters in which these acts of racial violence occur are all black.

Troy and Kipo both share a multi-racial Asian identity. As multiracial people, they serve as an example of a film trope where multiracial characters act as a bridge between cultures.  Through these characters, the animation is able to represent racial differences between humans without actually addressing racial issues during the script. Furthermore, because of their status as Asian Americans, they are members of “both the targeted, racialized, group in US immigration policy and yet [part of] the least ‘colored’ group in racial debate. Asian Americans offer a charged site where American nationhood invests much of its contradictory desires and anxieties.’ The prominence of peaceful racial coexistence amongst humans as evidenced by multiracial people indicates that this is a postmodern society where humans live in a race free utopia.

The idea that multiracial people are symbols of the declining significance of race also lends itself to the future that Kipo is working towards: a world where humans and mutes thrive and live together peacefully without adversity. The explicit identification of multiracial characters in Kipo can be read as a symbol for hope, for a future where ‘color-blindness’ is the norm and racial categories are continuously blurred.

This comes with its own set of qualms, as it can ignore much of the context of racial upbringing and cultural heritage that comes with being a Person of Color, let alone one with a mixed background.        

Multiracial Ambassadors

Kipo is what we call a multiracial ambassador in Hollywood, a persona well established in film history. The multiracial ambassador is a main character who often appears in action films that is supposed to reflect the diversity of younger generations and their interests in seeing people who represent them. Instead of relying on brute strength, the contemporary action hero is distinguished by, in the words of Mary Beltran, “their natural ability to navigate in, command respect and when necessary, kick ass in a variety of ethnic communities.”

The multiracial ambassador normally operates within a multiethnic cityscape, a setting that appears frequently in Hollywood action films. It is appropriate then, that Kipo’s world is set in a reimagined Los Angeles called “Las Vistas.”

Las Vistas, Kipo Fandom Wiki

One of the key features of the Hollywood multiethnic cityscape are turf wars based on racial tensions. We see this in the gangster films in the 20s and 30s, social problem films from the 40s, and movies concerning white flight in the 50s and 60s. Non-white people were seen as violent criminals in urban centers, prompting white people to flee to the suburbs.

For those who have seen Kipo, this may ring some bells. Humans retreat to the safe societies they built below the surface, far away from the upper world where dangerous mutes live on the surface. Despite the racial diversity of the human characters in Kipo, the humans can be read as symbols for white society in relation to the mutes. The predominant narrative surrounding mutes in the Burrow is that they are uncivilized and dangerous.

But with the appearance of the multiracial ambassador, such as Kipo, characters are able to navigate complicated and nuanced racial tensions  Kipo is able to navigate relationships between humans and mutes not purely because of her biraciality, but because she is willing to listen to others and develop connections with people. However, her biracial-ness mirrors this cultural savviness.

Political Blackness

Kipo’s portrayal as both a black and Korean character also allows the world’s environment and music- a core theme in the show- to be built around her: Black and Korean musical themes and cultural references are woven through the fabric of the show. However, while this ‘cultural Blackness’ is celebrated, ‘political Blackness’ (including the persistence of racism) is disguised more as a class struggle, similar to the conflict between Mutes and humans. Kipo’s biraciality and Black identity is diluted as an appeal to mainstream pop culture, and a more fantastical interspecies conflict of humans vs. animal Mutants.

While the plot of Kipo heavily relies on considering racial tensions and discrimination, the show avoids directly acknowledging the way that Blackness affects and shapes the characters’ lives. In terms of the postmodern future, animation and science fiction tends to see human society as color-blind, yet at the same time uses racial allegory to create the ‘other’ the same way POC have been ‘othered’ and dehumanized in film history. The tensions between the Mutes and the humans can be read as an allegory for racial tensions we have had in human history and are having currently.  However, the post-racial lenses that show views of the human world in Kipo don’t acknowledge racism in human history or how it may affect this fictional future, instead focusing it on the adversity between humans and mutes.

Final Thoughts

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for an animated series with beautiful world-building and well-developed characters. I think the steps it takes towards building well developed and diverse characters are highly notable and to be commended. However, I think it’s important to acknowledge the circumstances in which Kipo was created to be a multiracial character.

 Kipo builds on a legacy of multi-racial tropes in Hollywood and takes advantage of popular trending ideas of our time such as Black hip hop, anime, and LGTBQ representation to create an action TV series that is neatly packaged for younger and older audiences alike. The show skirts over the political context and histories for its human characters in favor of more light-hearted and marketable content. At the same time, it attempts to touch on complicated issues regarding racial discrimination and prejudice through Mute-human interaction.

 This post-apocalyptic, post-modern future of humans aspires to be a post-racial utopia where a multiethnic population can thrive, first in terms of multi-ethnic humans and by the end of the series, for both humans and mutes, now deemed ‘Wonderbeasts.’ 

There is further work to be done in animation yet in creating multi-ethnic characters without their identity ‘becoming’ the plot, and in acknowledging the political and cultural heritage of People of Color, but I am optimistic and look forward to the progress being made by creators in the industry.

The post Kipo: Biraciality and Blackness appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Let them eat McDonalds says director, Mark Mylod, with one of Searchlight Picture’s newest star-studded original films, The Menu. There’s a lot going for this film: Ralph Fiennes’ hypnotic performance as psychopath Gordon Ramsay, a hauntingly memorable score by Colin Stetson, and Peter Deming’s masterful camerawork weave gorgeously together to create what really is an entertaining time with friends and family. But sadly, that’s where the buck stops.

At the end of the day, the film rings hollow: there’s enough Christopher Nolan brand spectacle and pseudo-intellectualism to satisfy most viewers exiting the theater (or more likely, turning off their streaming device), but you’re left with a sour taste once you inevitably realize that there is no depth to the film at all.

Class is used as a buzzword in the hopes that the film will appear profound, but frankly, the message of the film is insulting. The protagonist is named Margo, a sex-worker who manages to escape because she fulfills the crazed chef’s fantasy of having his high-end food rejected for a ten dollar cheese burger to go. Chef Slowik, his staff, and the wealthy clients trapped on the island perish explosively as Margo hungrily scarfs down the burger on the boat she escapes on. 

So what’s the message? Satisfy the white man in power if you want to survive? Flipping burgers is more fulfilling than pursuing your passion? Whatever hang ups you might have about Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion (assuming you’ve watched it), it’s hard not to admit that the imagery it closes with is powerful and evocative of radical leftist rebellion; unlike The Menu, Glass Onion actually says, eat the rich.  

Mylod writes in a snooty critic to dismiss criticism as a whole, insinuating that they destroy artists arbitrarily because they are given too much authority— that artists can’t fail because their work… might not actually be that good. And Tyler, played by Nicholas Holte, is created to criticize fans who obsess over things they can’t do themselves. It’s as if to say that only people who know how to do it should enjoy it, whatever it may be. 

The film, like Fight Club, The Dark Knight, and American Psycho, is essentially about cults and intoxicating cult leaders. But unlike the movies mentioned, the ideology and allure of the cult is never developed in The Menu, robbing it of the entire premise’s appeal. We watch people burn themselves alive for Chef Slowik, but we never quite get why, and that’s extremely disappointing!   

I desperately wanted to love the film, but it’s best described as a bunch of interesting ideas, loosely strung together in the hopes that viewers will make something of it. Once it’s in their hands though, it quickly falls apart and any meaning you might try to extract from the film ceases to make sense once you think about it for two or three seconds. There are a lot of reasons to watch it — just don’t be surprised when you’re left hungrier than before. 

The post The Menu: Beautiful Presentation… But Lacks Substance appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Breaking the english 

Haiku beyond syllables. 

Written by Quinn L.

When I was in third grade, I was taught the Haiku as an introduction to poetry by my teacher, Ms. Miller. She introduced the Haiku to my class as an accessible poetic form, structured enough to teach to kids. I absolutely adored writing Haikus (and still do!), to the point that I started turning all of my homework in in this format, including math and science write ups. 

Haikus were explained to me as ‘short, syllabic nature poems’. The English Haiku is usually written with a three-line format, the first and last lines having five syllables each, and the one in the middle having seven syllables. This structure originates from the Japanese language, where historically, Haikus are counted in terms of -on and -ji, which are wrongly approximated to syllables in English. The biggest misconception when it comes to understandings of Haiku outside of Japan, is that this syllabic structure is what defines a Haiku. However, contemporary Haiku practitioners in Japan dropped the 5-7-5 format decades ago, in favor of more fluid, and flexible poems. 

Michael Welch MD, editor of The Journal of the E.E. Cummings Society argues that the Haiku should be written differently. “Haiku are short, objective poems conveying a keenly perceived moment of heightened subjective awareness” (Welch 95). According to Welch, Haiku defies the usage of ego – assistive devices like metaphor, parallel, and judgment, and instead focuses on “The ‘thing’ simply as it is, in all of its rich ‘suchness” . ‘Suchness’ here can be defined as the Haiku’s ability to focus deeply on every aspect of one object, and ego – assertive devices can therefore be defined as devices that get in the way of an object’s ‘suchness’. In short, Haiku chooses pure representation over interpretation by the poet. Of course, the natural world is not limited to man – made rules or implications, so why then is the Haiku constrained to this ‘5-7-5’ format? To understand this misinterpretation one must understand a few simple things about the Japanese language. 

Haiku was originally introduced to the English language in the nineteenth century, and before then it was known as hokku, and the Japanese had been practicing hokku since the beginning of the seventeenth century. There is a term used by English speakers to describe the way that Japanese uses sounds or ‘syllables’ to structure Haiku, the term is onji. However, this term is alien to Japanese people, even Japanese poets. Dr. Richard Gilbert, professor of Japanese Literature at the Prefectoral University of Kumamoto explores the term onji in his paper ‘Stalking the Wild Onji: The Search for Current Linguistic Terms Used in Japanese Poetry Circles’ after writing a Haiku on the board and asking his students to count the onji, his students responded with confounded silence. “Differences between [English] and [Japanese] and inadequate presentations [of Haiku] have created confusions, misusage of terms, and in some quarters, a reductionistic sensibility regarding formal aspects of Japanese poetry” (Gilbert), and this is likely due to the fact that many Western Haiku Circles have never trained, studied, or written in Japan or Japanese (Gilbert). Thus, traditional Japanese terms have become Westernized, and ultimately detached from their true meanings. The Haiku in English is merely an emulation of its original Japanese form. While ‘traditional’ Haiku is counted in terms of seventeen units, they are not the seventeen syllables that English writers are familiar with. 

The Japanese language is composed of small units of sound that do not mix together. For example, an English speaker would separate the word ‘London’ into two syllables, lon/don, whereas a Japanese speaker would separate the word ‘London’ into four units of sound, called morae as lo/n/do/n. What this means, is that the syllable does not exist in Japanese, because of the way that Japanese is spoken. In Japanese, things are counted using different ‘placeholders’ that denote the way that a thing is being counted. Haiku are counted using the particles –on, and -ji. -On is the counter for ‘sound’, whereas -ji is the counter for Japanese character. -On and -ji have no approximation in the English language, so to use syllables to measure the length of Haiku is misinformed appropriation. Traditional Japanese Haiku are counted either in terms of sounds, or in terms of syllables. 

古池や 蛙飛こむ 水のをと

Furu ike ya (5 -on) kawazu tobikomu (7 -on) mizu no oto (5 -on)

The old pond (3) A frog leaps in (4) The sound of the water (6)

A translation of a famous Haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) by R.H. Blyth. 

midsummer reverie 

sound of splashing waves

in my mint soda 

-Keiko Izawa, from Yokohama, Japan, published in Acorn, a Journal of Contemporary Haiku

Onji is not an acceptable term to describe the way that the Japanese Haiku is counted because in Japanese it is impossible to count both the number of characters, and the number of sounds while maintaining a count of seventeen.  

Now that onji is established as an innapropriate framework, several conclusions can be drawn about the English Haiku. The –ji and -on counters do not exist in English, therefore a number to justify the length of the English Haiku is impossible to define in terms of the traditional Japanese style. Instead, what can be kept from the original Japanese Haiku in English are the five sensations (or truths) of Haiku (Welch). According to Welch, meaning, and not structure is more important to Haiku. “Even in Japan many modern Haiku writers have abandoned this structure [of counting]”, there is no logical reason therefore, for the Haiku to be taught as a poem with defined form, yet the basic lack of understanding between the characteristics of the Japanese and English languages prevent English writers from understanding this shift in Haiku. 

The five moods, or sensations, that define Haiku are sabi which is a feeling of sweet, and solitary melancholy. Wabi which represents the unpretentious suchness of the ordinary. Aware that represents sadness, yugen or the mystery of the unknown. And karami which represents the lightness or joyful acceptance of the ethereal or the ordinary (Welch). These moods, combined with an objective awareness are what truly define Haiku. 

E.E. Cummings is often credited for writing Haiku – esque poems. They are short, subjective, yet they equate nature to human nature in a selfless way that does not rely on ego – centric devices to convey ‘suchness’. This being said, no poem is truly objective, but the only part of Haiku to come from stipulation by the writer, instead of observation, is the writer’s choice in the inclusion of detail in their Haiku. Cummings was able to reveal himself through his ability to capture detail in this way. He often toyed with language, and claimed that his poems were sometimes ‘unreadable’ because they were ‘visual’ instead of auditory. In his use of physical layout, and in his deconstruction of words, Cummings helped to define the true English Haiku. 

One such poem published in Cumming’s book “95 Poems” is a perfect example of a linguistic experiment that resulted in the creation of a contemporary Haiku in English. 

‘Untitled’

un(bee)mo

vi 

n(in)g 

are(th

e)you(o

nly) 

asl(rose)eep (95 poems, 1958) 

In this Haiku, the image of the lone rose is sharpened in the reader’s mind, who, being so absorbed, can only see the immediate object of total attention. Of course, the rose here may also be seen through the eyes of the bee. Here Cummings creates a broad implication without the use of ego – centric device. If the reader interprets this poem as two halves instead of a whole, grouping the words inside of the parenthesis together and grouping the words outside of the parenthesis together, more is revealed. “bee/ in/ the/ only/ rose” (Untitled 1958) is a simple image of a bee in a rose setting, which invokes a sense of karami or the inundation of the self into the ethereal or the ordinary. “Unmo/ vi/ ng/ are/ you/ asleep” (Untitled) reveals the observable quality of stagnation, which follows the idea that Haiku should be exact. However, the greatest interest of this poem’s message is the unanswered question, “are/ you/ asleep?” (Untitled). This creates a sense wonder at how a bee could sleep in such a beautiful only rose, and by extension it asks the reader the same question in the context of their own existence (Welch). 

In his book “73 Poems”, Cummings published another poem that would change the way that the form of English Haiku was interpreted – 

‘Untitled.’ 

one 

t

hi 

s 

snowflake 

(a

    li 

        ght 

    in

g) 

is upon a gra

v 

es 

t 

one (73 Poems 1963).

This poem is again, subjective, and descriptive. To begin, it brings out the different overtones created by splitting the word ‘gravestone’ into the words ‘vest’, ‘one’, and ‘gravest one’. This separation is purely objective, using only the snowflake to give these words connotation. The increasing indentation along the word ‘alighting’ gives the poem a sense of presence, and a sense of exact time using visual placement. This poem’s true strength relies in the purity of its image, which exactly mirrors the definition of the ‘true’ Haiku. The reader only sees the snowflake – one snowflake – at the exact moment that it touches a gravestone. Here there is an objective correlation that equates snow to winter, and winter to death, creating an external symbol for internalized emotion associated with death. Untitled. has a somber, and cold tone, and the only irony that exists is between the unmoving gravestone and the drifting snowflake (Welch). 

The final example of a Haiku written by E.E. Cummings is perhaps the most famous, [l(a] is the shortest Haiku that Cummings wrote, yet it still represents a clear depiction of presence while remaining objective. 

l(a

le 

af 

fa 

ll 

s)

one 

l 

iness (95 Poems 1958). 

By using the framework provided, the reader can assume that the separation of the word ‘lonliness’ occurs so that it may also be read as ‘oneness’. If this poem were not a haiku, the feeling of lonliness would be characterized by a falling leaf, but because this is a haiku, lonliness is instead used to contextualize the way that a leaf falls. This of course reveals the human tendency to associate lonliness with oneness, and the desire to be a part of something. [l(a] also invokes a sense of desperation because it occurs as the leaf is separated from its whole. 

Haikus can be so much more meaningful when they are unbound from their syllabic structure, not only does counting syllables limit what a Haiku is capable of capturing, the method of determining a haiku using units of sound has long been abandoned in Japan, where practitioners create more fluid, flexible Haiku. I like to think of Haikus as a way that language can approximate an image or impression of a single moment of being. There is so much exploration left to do when it comes to the Haiku form in English, Haiku often equates human nature to the natural world, it does not need to be bound to a specific form. I have been writing Haikus since Ms. Miller first introduced them to me in third grade, they look quite different now than they did back then, but no matter how they change, I will always think of Haikus as a form of poem that helped me become a writer.

Bibliography

GILBERT, RICHARD. “Stalking the Wild Onji: The Search for Current Linguistic Terms Used in Japanese Poetry Circles.” Stalking the Wild Onji: AHA Books, www.ahapoetry.com/wildonji.htm. 

Welch, Michael. “The Haiku Sensibilities of E. E. Cummings.” Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society #4, Cummings Soceity, 1995, pp. 95–120.

Welch, Michael. “Three Hokku by E. E. Cummings.” Frogpond XVI:1, Haiku Society of America, 1993, pp. 51–56.

Cummings, Edward Estlin, and George James Firmage. 73 Poems. Liveright, 2003.

Cummings, Edward Estlin, and George James Firmage. 95 Poems. Liveright, 2002.

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